


And Our Souls Brush Against Each Other

by easternCriminal



Series: the Birds on my Back - taz soulmates au [1]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: BOTH, Multi, Soulmate AU, Soulmate tatoos, Soulmates, Soulmates AU, and romantic, found family implied for future, platonic, pre ipre
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-08
Updated: 2017-10-08
Packaged: 2019-01-10 13:07:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12299751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/easternCriminal/pseuds/easternCriminal
Summary: Drabbles for a soulmate mark au for TAZ, pre ipre





	And Our Souls Brush Against Each Other

Soulmate marks are a private affair for most. They aren’t recorded on most legal documents save for identifiers. When entering IPRE’s program they weren’t even mentioned in any of the paperwork. Soulmates could be anywhere from a best friend, to your rival, to your lover. They diverse but sacred in a way. It’s critical to know that sometimes coincidence, or fate, or destiny, takes the reigns and puts the exact right people with one another. 

 

Taako and Lup grew up knowing they were soulmates. They matched, of course they did. There etched on their backs was what they always knew deep in their souls. On their back, lying on their shoulder blades, the six birds. Three on each side. It was hard for them to get a look of the mark. When they were younger they’d take turns showing the other their soulmate mark. How the birds would flap their wings. Occasionally even travel across their backs, and on rare occasions branch off to their arms or go fly around the skin on their faces and necks. The six didn’t make sense. But soulmate marks seldom did. They could be incredibly ornate for simple. Symbolic or practical. 

As the two of them continued what felt like their endless journey with no destination, migrating away from another city, Taako thought, for a moment, he understood why.

 

Lucretia tried not to let the six birds on her back bother her. Even when they would fly onto her hands as she wrote, as if demanding her attention. She had read about those who sought out their soulmates, as if the only purpose of life was to find a match of some sort. People who let it define them. But she subscribed to the fact that soulmates would come together when they were needed. If her soulmate, someone who must be so eccentric to warrant six entire birds to flutter constantly from her back to her arms, indeed they would flock to her when the time was right.

 

Davenport didn’t care much for his soulmate mark. It only really bothered him when one of the birds would fly up the back of his neck, sending shivers down his spine. He didn’t have time for his soulmate. He buried his nose deeper into his studies, into training and making and building up the program. Soulmates were a waste of time. Whoever it was probably wouldn’t even be interested in his studies, in his goal to explore the cosmos. It was better not to find them and then disappoint them.

(Internally, some nights, when he stayed away and felt them lightly flutter on his back, he would think that someone who is defined by a bird, a creature that spends its life traveling, would be willing to go to the stars with him.)

 

Barry loved the entire concept of soulmates. Someone who you could share such a bond with that it was written into your skin. Into your soul. Did you know they can’t be burned off? They just relocate to a new area of skin. Or reappear on scars. Or let the scars change their form but they never fully go away. That’s how strong they are. It’s what got him through being bullied. The six birds carried him through finals week. Through his parents divorce. 

Their wings tickled his back and in the morning seemed to flock around his face, as if saying good morning. The sensations of their wings flapping like little kisses from his soulmate. He hoped only to meet them one day in person. Whether it’s platonic and a friend or.... (and he secretly hoped would be) a lover. That he could repay them for all the light kisses that had ghosted over his face.

 

Magnus’ soulmate mark(s?) flocked towards his wounds. Every cut and bruise they flew towards, as if to attempt and heal it. As he got older the birds would do it less, he imagined it was because they got tired of it, and part of him wondered if his soulmate knew how their mark made ran itself ragged in his youth to try and  attend to each small cut. They seemed to understand that he could take care of himself as he got older, and in a way it was a relief because it was hard to intimidate a dude at a bar trying to get him to stop harassing someone when the six birds were fluttering around a forming bruise from a punch.

Mostly now they just soared across the scars on his back, racing up and down spine.

 

Merle had six soulmates. Or one soulmate with a really big heart. In his village everyone made a big deal about his six birds. As if birds equaled nature and nature always had to equal Pan. When he was younger he hated them. Hated how they liked to glide across his body as if demanding attention. He couldn’t think about them without thinking about Pan and feeling both guilty and full of hate at the same time. It took him a long time to think about them as anything but. It occurred to him, only after his hair began to turn gray, that his soulmates were real people. There was an actual person out there, as far away from his home town as he was. 

Someone who was a bird too, who was maybe flying away from a past they didn’t want but was thrust on them anyway. He would very much like to meet that person some day. 

 

Seven recruits walk into a room.


End file.
